Banking-as-a-service startup Solid (formerly called Wise) has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, according to documents filed in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware on April 7. Founded in 2018, the fintech company had raised a total of nearly $81 million in funding from investors such as FTV Capital and Headline. […]
Read more The dramatic suit between OpenAI and its estranged co-founder, billionaire Elon Musk, shows no sign of letting up. In a filing Wednesday, attorneys for OpenAI and the other defendants in the case, including CEO Sam Altman, called for Musk to be enjoined from “further unlawful and unfair action” and “held responsible for the damage he […]
Read more Update: Since this story was first published in The Spark, our weekly climate newsletter, the White House announced that most reciprocal tariffs would be paused for 90 days. That pause does not apply to China, which will see an increased tariff rate of 125%.
Today, new tariffs go into effect for goods imported into the US from basically every country on the planet.
Since Donald Trump announced his plans for sweeping tariffs last week, the vibes have been, in a word, chaotic. Markets have seen one of the quickest drops in the last century, and it’s widely anticipated that the global economic order may be forever changed.
While many try not to look at the effects on their savings and retirement accounts, experts are scrambling to understand what these tariffs might mean for various industries. As my colleague James Temple wrote in a new story last week, anxieties are especially high in climate technology.
These tariffs could be particularly rough on the battery industry. China dominates the entire supply chain and is subject to monster tariff rates, and even US battery makers won’t escape the effects.
First, in case you need it, a super-quick refresher: Tariffs are taxes charged on goods that are imported (in this case, into the US). If I’m a US company selling bracelets, and I typically buy my beads and string from another country, I’ll now be paying the US government an additional percentage of what those goods cost to import. Under Trump’s plan, that might be 10%, 20%, or upwards of 50%, depending on the country sending them to me.
In theory, tariffs should help domestic producers, since products from competitors outside the country become more expensive. But since so many of the products we use have supply chains that stretch all over the world, even products made in the USA often have some components that would be tariffed.
In the case of batteries, we could be talking about really high tariff rates, because most batteries and their components currently come from China. As of 2023, the country made more than 75% of the world’s lithium-ion battery cells, according to data from the International Energy Agency.
Trump’s new plan adds a 34% tariff on all Chinese goods, and that stacks on top of a 20% tariff that was already in place, making the total 54%. (Then, as of Wednesday, the White House further raised the tariff on China, making the total 104%.)
But when it comes to batteries, that’s not even the whole story. There was already a 3.5% tariff on all lithium-ion batteries, for example, as well as a 7.5% tariff on batteries from China that’s set to increase to 25% next year.
If we add all those up, lithium-ion batteries from China could have a tariff of 82% in 2026. (Or 132%, with this additional retaliatory tariff.) In any case, that’ll make EVs and grid storage installations a whole lot more expensive, along with phones, laptops, and other rechargeable devices.
The economic effects could be huge. The US still imports the majority of its lithium-ion batteries, and nearly 70% of those imports are from China. The US imported $4 billion worth of lithium-ion batteries from China just during the first four months of 2024.
Although US battery makers could theoretically stand to benefit, there are a limited number of US-based factories. And most of those factories are still purchasing components from China that will be subject to the tariffs, because it’s hard to overstate just how dominant China is in battery supply chains.
While China makes roughly three-quarters of lithium-ion cells, it’s even more dominant in components: 80% of the world’s cathode materials are made in China, along with over 90% of anode materials. (For those who haven’t been subject to my battery ramblings before, the cathode and anode are two of the main components of a battery—basically, the plus and minus ends.)
Even battery makers that work in alternative chemistries don’t seem to be jumping for joy over tariffs. Lyten is a California-based company working to build lithium-sulfur batteries, and most of its components can be sourced in the US. (For more on the company’s approach, check out this story from 2024.) But tariffs could still spell trouble. Lyten has plans for a new factory, scheduled for 2027, that rely on sourcing affordable construction materials. Will that be possible? “We’re not drawing any conclusions quite yet,” Lyten’s chief sustainability officer, Keith Norman, told Heatmap News.
The battery industry in the US was already in a pretty tough spot. Billions of dollars’ worth of factories have been canceled since Trump took office. Companies making investments that can total hundreds of millions or billions of dollars don’t love uncertainty, and tariffs are certainly adding to an already uncertain environment.
We’ll be digging deeper into what the tariffs mean for climate technology broadly, and specifically some of the industries we cover. If you have questions, or if you have thoughts to share about what this will mean for your area of research or business, I’d love to hear them at casey.crownhart@technologyreview.com. I’m also on Bluesky @caseycrownhart.bsky.social.
This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here.
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology.
A new biosensor can detect bird flu in five minutes
Over the winter, eggs suddenly became all but impossible to buy. As a bird flu outbreak rippled through dairy and poultry farms, grocery stores struggled to keep them on shelves.
The shortages and record-high prices in February raised costs dramatically for restaurants and bakeries and led some shoppers to skip the breakfast staple entirely. But a team based at Washington University in St. Louis has developed a device that could help slow future outbreaks by detecting bird flu in air samples in just five minutes. Read the full story.
—Carly Kay
This story is from the next edition of our print magazine, which is all about the body. Subscribe now to read it and get a copy of the magazine when it lands!
This Texas chemical plant could get its own nuclear reactors
Nuclear reactors could someday power a chemical plant in Texas, making it the first with such a facility onsite. The factory, which makes plastics and other materials, could become a model for power-hungry data centers and other industrial operations going forward.
The plans are the work of Dow Chemical and X-energy, which last week applied for a construction permit with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the agency in the US that governs nuclear energy.
While it’ll be years before nuclear reactors will actually turn on, this application marks a major milestone for the project, and for the potential of advanced nuclear technology to power industrial processes. Read the full story.
—Casey Crownhart
MIT Technology Review Narrated: Exosomes are touted as a trendy cure-all. We don’t know if they work.
People are spending thousands of dollars on unproven exosome therapies for hair loss, skin aging, and acne, as well as more serious conditions like long covid and Alzheimer’s.
This is our latest story to be turned into a MIT Technology Review Narrated podcast, which we’re publishing each week on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Just navigate to MIT Technology Review Narrated on either platform, and follow us to get all our new content as it’s released.
The must-reads
I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.
1 Donald Trump is confident Apple can make iPhones in the US
Tim Cook is probably less sure about that. (9to5Mac)
+ Politicians are obsessed with the fantasy of an America-made iPhone. (404 Media)
+ If you need a new phone, you’re better off buying one now. (Wired $)
2 Trade groups are weighing up suing Trump to fight his tariffs
The Chamber of Commerce and other groups feel they may not have another option. (WSJ $)
+ Trump has hit China with a 104% tariff. (CNBC)
+ What does he really hope to achieve? (Vox)
+ Even the conservative podcasters that helped him win aren’t happy. (FT $)
+ Trump’s tariffs will deliver a big blow to climate tech. (MIT Technology Review)
3 The UK government is building a “murder prediction” tool
But research shows that algorithmic crime prediction systems don’t work. (The Guardian)
+ Predictive policing algorithms are racist. They need to be dismantled. (MIT Technology Review)
4 DOGE has converted magnetic tapes to digital records
The problem is, magnetic tapes are stable and safe. Digital records are both hackable and vulnerable to bit rot. (404 Media)
+ Government technologists aren’t happy about the switch. (Economist $)
+ Can AI help DOGE slash government budgets? It’s complex. (MIT Technology Review)
5 The crypto industry isn’t benefiting from Trump quite yet
In fact, VC investment has fallen. (Bloomberg $)
+ However, prosecutors are being told to stop pursuing certain crypto crimes. (WP $)
6 Tech bros are building a Christian utopia in Appalachia
These groups have traditionally existed only online. Can building a town bring them together? (Mother Jones $)
7 California’s only nuclear power plant is using AI
It’s the first time generative AI has been used onsite at a power plant.(The Markup)
+ Interest in nuclear power is surging. Is it enough to build new reactors? (MIT Technology Review)
8 Custom 3D-printed railway shelters are being trialed in Japan
In a bid to help rural stations replace ageing infrastructure. (Ars Technica)
9 We’re learning more about how the Titanic sank
Thanks to a new scan of its wreckage. (BBC)
10 Would you ride this headless horse robot?
Kawasaki’s outlandish concept model looks decidedly unsafe. (Vice)
+ A skeptic’s guide to humanoid-robot videos. (MIT Technology Review)
Quote of the day
“iPhone manufacturing isn’t coming back to America.”
—An anonymous source familiar with Apple’s plans has some bad news for the Trump administration, the Washington Post reports.
The big story
Inside effective altruism, where the far future counts a lot more than the present
Since its birth in the late 2000s, effective altruism has aimed to answer the question “How can those with means have the most impact on the world in a quantifiable way?”—and supplied methods for calculating the answer.
It’s no surprise that effective altruisms’ ideas have long faced criticism for reflecting white Western saviorism, alongside an avoidance of structural problems in favor of abstract math. And as believers pour even greater amounts of money into the movement’s increasingly sci-fi ideals, such charges are only intensifying. Read the full story.
—Rebecca Ackermann
We can still have nice things
A place for comfort, fun and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or skeet ’em at me.)
+ Why is everybody suddenly obsessed with Dubai chocolate? 
+ Inside one academic’s quest to locate the famous photograph hanging on the wall of The Shining’s Overlook Hotel.
+ Adorable: a Japanese town has created its own trading card game featuring older men in the community.
+ I think it’s safe to say Val Kilmer really didn’t enjoy being in the largely forgotten film Spartan.
Over the winter, eggs suddenly became all but impossible to buy. As a bird flu outbreak rippled through dairy and poultry farms, grocery stores struggled to keep them on shelves. The shortages and record-high prices in February raised costs dramatically for restaurants and bakeries and led some shoppers to skip the breakfast staple entirely. But a team based at Washington University in St. Louis has developed a device that could help slow future outbreaks by detecting bird flu in air samples in just five minutes.
Bird flu is an airborne virus that spreads between birds and other animals. Outbreaks on poultry and dairy farms are devastating; mass culling of exposed animals can be the only way to stem outbreaks. Some bird flu strains have also infected humans, though this is rare. As of early March, there had been 70 human cases and one confirmed death in the US, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The most common way to detect bird flu involves swabbing potentially contaminated sites and sequencing the DNA that’s been collected, a process that can take up to 48 hours.
The new device samples the air in real time, running the samples past a specialized biosensor every five minutes. The sensor has strands of genetic material called aptamers that were used to bind specifically to the virus. When that happens, it creates a detectable electrical change. The research, published in ACS Sensors in February, may help farmers contain future outbreaks.
Part of the group’s work was devising a way to deliver airborne virus particles to the sensor.
With bird flu, says Rajan Chakrabarty, a professor of energy, environmental, and chemical engineering at Washington University and lead author of the paper, “the bad apple is surrounded by a million or a billion good apples.” He adds, “The challenge was to take an airborne pathogen and get it into a liquid form to sample.”
The team accomplished this by designing a microwave-size box that sucks in large volumes of air and spins it in a cyclone-like motion so that particles stick to liquid-coated walls. The process seamlessly produces a liquid drip that is pumped to the highly sensitive biosensor.
Though the system is promising, its effectiveness in real-world conditions remains uncertain, says Sungjun Park, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at Ajou University in South Korea, who was not involved in the study. Dirt and other particles in farm air could hinder its performance. “The study does not extensively discuss the device’s performance in complex real-world air samples,” Park says.
But Chakrabarty is optimistic that it will be commercially viable after further testing and is already working with a biotech company to scale it up. He hopes to develop a biosensor chip that detects multiple pathogens at once.
Carly Kay is a science writer based in Santa Cruz, California.
Nuclear reactors could someday power a chemical plant in Texas, making it the first with such a facility onsite. The factory, which makes plastics and other materials, could become a model for power-hungry data centers and other industrial operations going forward.
The plans are the work of Dow Chemical and X-energy, which last week applied for a construction permit with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the agency in the US that governs nuclear energy.
It’ll be years before nuclear reactors will actually turn on, but this application marks a major milestone for the project, and for the potential of advanced nuclear technology to power industrial processes.
“This has been a long time coming,” says Harlan Bowers, senior vice president at X-energy. The company has been working with the NRC since 2016 and submitted its first regulatory engagement plan in 2018, he says.
In 2020, the US Department of Energy chose X-energy as one of the awardees of the Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program, which provides funding for next-generation nuclear technologies. And it’s been two years since X-energy and Dow first announced plans for a joint development agreement at Dow’s plant in Seadrift, Texas.
The Seadrift plant produces 4 billion pounds of materials each year, including plastic used for food and pharmaceutical packaging and chemicals used in products like antifreeze, soaps, and paint. A natural-gas plant onsite currently provides both steam and electricity. That equipment is getting older, so the company was looking for alternatives.
“Dow saw the opportunity to replace end-of-life assets with safe, reliable, lower-carbon-emissions technology,” said Edward Stones, an executive at Dow, in a written statement in response to questions from MIT Technology Review.
Advanced nuclear reactors designed by X-energy emerged as a fit for the Seadrift site in part because of their ability to deliver high-temperature steam, Stones said in the statement.
X-energy’s reactor is not only smaller than most nuclear plants coming online today but also employs different fuel and different cooling methods. The design is a high-temperature gas-cooled reactor, which flows helium over self-contained pebbles of nuclear fuel. The fuel can reach temperatures of around 1,000 °C (1,800 °F). As it flows through the reactor and around the pebbles, the helium reaches up to 750 °C (about 1,400 °F). Then that hot helium flows through a generator, making steam at a high temperature and pressure that can be piped directly to industrial equipment or converted into electricity.
The Seadrift facility will include four of X-energy’s Xe-100 reactors, each of which can produce about 200 megawatts’ worth of steam or about 80 megawatts of electricity.
A facility like Dow’s requires an extremely consistent supply of steam, Bowers says. So during normal operation, two of the modules will deliver steam, one will deliver electricity, and the final unit will sell electricity to the local grid. If any single reactor needs to shut down for some reason, there will still be enough onsite power to keep running, he explains.
The progress with the NRC is positive news for the companies involved, but it also represents an achievement for advanced reactor technology more broadly, says Erik Cothron, a senior analyst at the Nuclear Innovation Alliance, a nonprofit think tank. “It demonstrates real-world momentum toward deploying new nuclear reactors for industrial decarbonization,” Cothron says.
While there are other companies looking to bring advanced nuclear reactor technology online, this project could be the first to incorporate nuclear power onsite at a factory. It thus sets a precedent for how new nuclear energy technologies can integrate directly with industry, Cothron says—for example, showing a pathway for tech giants looking to power data centers.
It could take up to two and a half years for the NRC to review the construction permit application for this site. The site will also need to receive an operating license before it can start up. Operations are expected to begin “early next decade,” according to Dow.
Correction: A previous version of this story misspelled Erik Cothron’s name.
X is looking to move forward with its revamp of in-app messaging.
Sports are the most discussed topic on X.
As Meta comes for TikTok stars, the platform is offering new incentives to keep them around.
YouTube’s announced its support for the NO FAKES Act.